But another voice broke the film that shrouded the ears of my brain,
and the words became inspired and alive, and I forgot my own thoughts
in listening to the Holy Book. For is not the voice of every loving
spirit a fresh inspiration to the dead letter? With a voice other than
this, does it not kill? And I thought I had heard the voice before,
but where I sat I could not see the Communion Table.--At length the
preacher ascended the pulpit stairs, and, to my delight and the
rousing of an altogether unwonted expectation, who should it be but my
fellow-traveller of last night!

He had a look of having something to say; and I immediately felt that
I had something to hear. Having read his text, which I forget, the
broad-browed man began with something like this:

"It is not the high summer alone that is God's. The winter also is
His. And into His winter He came to visit us. And all man's winters
are His--the winter of our poverty, the winter of our sorrow, the
winter of our unhappiness--even 'the winter of our discontent.'"

I stole a glance at Adela. Her large eyes were fixed on the preacher.

"Winter," he went on, "does not belong to death, although the outside
of it looks like death. Beneath the snow, the grass is growing. Below
the frost, the roots are warm and alive. Winter is only a spring too
weak and feeble for us to see that it is living. The cold does for all
things what the gardener has sometimes to do for valuable trees: he
must half kill them before they will bear any fruit. Winter is in
truth the small beginnings of the spring."

I glanced at Adela again; and still her eyes were fastened on the